In Shadow
by Penglaive
Summary: For those who move through the shadows, it's easy to lose sight of the things that are there—and even easier to lose sight of the things that aren't. Series of drabbles.
1. Echoes

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Kingdom Hearts—that honor belongs to Squaresoft and Disney. I'm just playing in the sandbox.

Formatting: "Spoken words are in quotes." _Internal character thoughts are in italics._

* * *

It's not like Axel feels things, really. He's a Nobody, after all, and no body means no thumping menace in the left center of your chest. But sometimes he and Roxas go out in search of Heartless, and somewhere in the middle of a charging horde of Darkness, illuminated by wild bursts of fire and the sharp flash of a key, there is this fierce, unrepentant rush of sensation that makes the synapses of Axel's brain light up as if his skin had suddenly become a sheet of licking flames. His thoughts are like meteors, bright with the friction of atmospheric entry, carving out feverish lines and arcs between the stars, trajectories of chakrams and blazing heat, his muscles quivering with barely contained fire. In those little half second lulls between the advance of one dark rank and the next, he'll sometimes catch Roxas' eyes—just the flash of irises, the color of blue sky, and there will be this little smirk, Axel's smirk, reflected on Roxas' lips.

They're not really friends, but there's just enough there to pretend they are. Maybe a facade _is _just as good as real to a Nobody—they don't have Hearts to tell the difference. So they go on their missions, go through the motions, swinging blades and sharing smirks and eating ice cream afterwards. They dabble in semantics, not minding that they never really talk about anything heartfelt. It would be rather pointless to try, given their nature, but there are idle ramblings and comfortable silences, mixed in with quicksilver exchanges of wit, and it's all too easy to forget the things that were never there. Sometimes, though, Roxas will say something, and—of course it's just pretend, but—he'll get the inflection just right, just bright or sharp or warm enough, and Axel will remember another time, another place, another life ago, when he'd searched and flailed and struggled on with what felt like a nova burning a hole in his chest, he'd just cared _that much_—

He hadn't been Axel then, of course, not in that Before time when he'd had a hope and purpose and a Heart. Now, he has his fire and his chakrams and a partner with a freakishly oversized key to help combat the mobs of Heartless that never seem to thin out. All the fighting would grow a bit tedious if it weren't the only sort of excitement that a Nobody really gets, and in the dashing, slashing, spinning fever of Keyblade edges and wheels of fire, there are these little reflexive recollections, these tiny shards of memory piercing into him at the sharpness of Roxas' smile...

It's not the same as having real emotions, nothing could be, but it reminds Axel of who he once was, how he once burned as bright as the stars themselves, and in the rush of heat laced memories, there is _something_ stretching out in that empty place inside of him: echoes of his Heart.


	2. Cloaked

"Why would you do this?" DiZ demanded, intending for it to come out as a musing, analytical question, but his diction betrayed his quiet fury as surely as the face before his gaze had betrayed him.

Riku returned his stare with Xehanort's cool amber eyes.

"You hate him, too," DiZ wanted to mutter, accusingly, like the bitter old man he was becoming, but the last of his scholarly reserve held that vitriol momentarily in check.

Xehanort's face contorted into a severe frown, nonetheless. "Do you think I _want _to wear the face of the person who used my body to hurt my friends? That, after everything I've done to separate myself from that failure, I would casually go back to this?" Riku challenged, gesturing to indicate that mutually loathed aspect.

"Then why?" he demanded, feeling the oldness overtake the bitterness, tiredness dulling his anger into something hollow.

That familiar, dark expression lifted, just a little. "...Even if I have to see this face in the mirror every day for the rest of my life, even if I have to hate myself with every breath I take, if this can help me save Sora, then it's worth it."

There was an emotion written there on Xehanort's well known face that DiZ was sure was completely foreign to it. Whereas Xehanort had worn a thin cloak of Light around his Darkness, Riku wore a cloak of Darkness around a blazing Light.

"Do you truly care so much?"

"If I didn't, then what would be the point of even having a Heart? I'd be no better than a Nobody."

Oh, how DiZ hated that voice, hated that face. But somewhere more wrenchingly, he hated that Heartbecause it alone held the power to make him, wise man among wise men, feel ashamed.

_How far from the path have I fallen, that I can stand next to Xehanort's form and be cast into shadow by his Light?_

He'd grown comfortable, stewing in his aging rancor and slow vengeance, but now DiZ regretted pushing Riku so hard to defeat Roxas, regretted driving him to a sacrifice that had become a punishment for them both. Most of all, though, he regretted the reminder of what his Heart was for, because now that he'd seen it, he found he couldn't stop wishing that Xehanort _had_ been capable of making an expression like that.

Then, because that hope was absurd, he laughed. He laughed because beneath all the heavy, twisted foundations of his rage, buried but never excised, remained the wish that he'd realized the dangers of his research sooner, that his apprentices hadn't all been lost to him. _They betrayed me long ago. Why must I still care so much?_

Riku had already given him the answer: _Because I'm not a Nobody, of course_.


End file.
